The latest update to our bi-annual transparency report is now available. In there you will find all of the usual details about the kinds and volume of both information requests and takedown demands that we receive across Automattic’s services. Below we have picked out a number of specific examples, to highlight some of the issues […]
Read more →A coalition of technology companies consisting of Automattic, Jodel, Seznam, Twitter and Vimeo have published a joint letter titled “The Digital Services Act: Defending the Digital Single Market and the Open Internet”. The letter highlights their concerns over the potential fragmentation of the EU’s single market for the Internet as a result of national initiatives […]
Read more →Today we invite you to read our bi-annual update to the Automattic transparency report, covering the period from July 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017. Read through to find details on the number of information requests and takedown demands we received from governments, as well as from intellectual property rights holders under the DMCA. Our […]
Read more →At Automattic, we build tools that make it easy for anybody to share their voice online. WordPress.com is home to tens of millions of sites, covering a huge variety of topics and issues—from news blogs, to websites for Fortune 500 companies, to thriving ecommerce stores. It also means that we inevitably host content which some […]
Read more →For our latest Hall of Shame entry, we turn our gaze towards the City of Abbotsford in Canada. For reference, here’s their logo. Commit it to memory, as you’ll want to remember what it looks like for later: City officials took issue with a 2013 post written by a homeless blogger that criticized them for […]
Read more →Today we launch our seventh bi-annual transparency report, covering the period between July 1 and December 31, 2016. As usual, we detail the number of takedown demands and requests for information received from governments, as well as the intellectual property (IP) takedown notices we have received. Having published these reports for a number of years now, […]
Read more →This week we were proud to be unveiled as an official corporate sponsor of the Open Rights Group (‘ORG’), the very same week that the controversial Investigatory Powers Bill is being debated in the British Parliament. ORG has been fighting tirelessly for digital rights in the UK since 2005. Despite their relatively small size, they have […]
Read more →Internet Service Providers and online platforms like WordPress.com are increasingly facing demands to block access to URLs in different countries. These orders can come as the result of court decisions (in the case of the UK and Turkey), or directly from governmental authorities (in the case of Russia or Georgia) and are usually directed at content […]
Read more →Last week saw an important victory in the battle to protect the fair use of copyrighted material online. A Federal Appeals Court held in Lenz v. Universal that the DMCA requires rights holders to consider the important doctrine of ‘fair use’ before issuing a takedown notification. We submitted an amicus brief in this case, and are very pleased […]
Read more →Every day we receive a significant number of requests to have content removed from sites hosted on WordPress.com. Many of these involve alleged copyright violations making use of the DMCA takedown process, or the publication of sensitive private information. We review every single one by hand to ensure that the processes are not being abused […]
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Transparency Report 